Water Hyacinth

The water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) in our pond is in full bloom. This plant invites a love-hate relationship. Its beauty exists even before it blooms in its lush, broad, oval, polished, deep green leaves. But when it blooms for a few days in the mid-summer heat it pushes the beauty up a few levels with its spike of delicate, lavender flowers, perfectly complimenting the green of its own foliage as well as any other that happens to be surrounding, a Monetesque scene. However, it’s also one of the most invasive of plants, probably the most invasive of water plants, doubling in area every two weeks, sending out shoots that form additional plants that in turn send out shoots that form more plants and so on until they take over the surface of a pond. Several days ago I went out to thin the hyacinth, as I already have done a couple of times this season. But I saw that most all of the plants had flower stalks with buds soon to open, so I decided to let them show their stuff for the few days they bloom. When they’re spent, I’ll quietly thin them out, hoping they won’t notice, as I dump them into the compost pile to rot with the garden weeds and kitchen waste, a summer microcosm of the life cycle we are all a part of.

Mid-Summer Gardens

Our backyard gardens are in full mid-summer bloom:

When we moved into our house some 16 years ago, the backyard was, like most Iowa City or American backyards, 90% lawn – mown grass. We soon decided that we wanted to, for aesthetic and mistaken practical reasons, to replace the lawn with a combination of mostly native prairie plants, a vegetable garden, an herb garden, a pond, and a deck. The aesthetic reasons have been born out. It’s pleasant to sit out on the deck in the evening, eating dinner, often with vegetables and herbs from the gardens, listening to the small fountain in the pond and the array of songbirds in the trees and bushes. The practical reasons which proved to be mistaken primarily involved the assumption that once we laid out a free-form web of native prairie plants with gravel paths, it would be low maintenance, self-sufficient, requiring some attention early in the season, but minimal during the summer months. But it has in fact turned out to be much more high maintenance than caring for a traditional lawn. We (and by “We” I mean mostly my wife) have to spend hours each week in the spring, clearing the previous year’s debris; pruning trees and bushes; clearing, turning, and planting the vegetable garden; draining, cleaning, and re-filling and planting the pond. And then throughout the summer we (and by “We” I mean . . .) have to regularly combat the weeds that weren’t supposed to be able to compete with the prairie plants, perennial herbs, or gravel paths. They do compete. And often win. Still, in the evening, as the sun sets, eating dinner on the deck, overlooking the result of our (and by “our” I mean . . .) labor, all seems well worth it.